Typically, a large organization, such as a company or corporation, includes several divisions/departments, each of which are working on one or more projects simultaneously. For example, Department A may be working on Project A, while the employees in Department B may be working on a different project, Project B. Often times, each project is a small aspect of the overall product or service that the organization provides.
Generally, an organization that works on a project basis includes an internal system for staffing and gathering resources for a project that the organization is currently working on or wishes to begin working on. As projects are created and setup within the company, a significant effort on the part of management is made to find resources available to staff the project. For example, such efforts may include setting up meetings with various managers to determine who might be available to start working on a project, arranging dates, and determining employees level of skill and/or interest in the various aspects of a project. Often times, the routine tasks that management performs to staff a project are time consuming processes that can be costly in terms of time to get a new project running and management man hours. Moreover, project staffing typically occurs on a per-department or per-division basis, where projects are staffed by team members in a particular department or division of the organization.
To aid management with staffing for new projects, project management software programs have been created. Typically, these software programs are designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets, and analyzing workloads for one or more projects. In most cases, such software programs require managers to manually assign resources to projects. Based on the resources assigned, the project management software calculates estimated costs for the project.